14 Quotes by Milorad Pavić

And so, when I began to read the proffered pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago.

Each of us promenades his thought, like a monkey on a leash. When you read, you always have to such monkeys: your own and one belonging to someone else. Or, even worse, a monkey and a hyena. Now, consider what you will feed them. For a hyena does not eat the same things as a monkey...

Моето име е Балкан, нейното - Европа.

Houses are like books: so many of them around you, yet you only look at a few and visit or reside in fewer still.

Da li znaš da čitaš poljupce? Poljupci su kao ljubavna pisma. Mogu se pročitati, a mogu se baciti nepročitani. Poljubac može da znači zdravo! Ili laku noć, zbogom, ili dobro jutro! On znači doviđenja, nosi izdaju i smrt, ili bolest, govori dobro došli, seti me se, ili srećan put! Poljubac je zalog sreće, sećanje, laž, obećanje, ili dug sa kamatom. Vesnik radosti ili nesreće. Kroz poljubac jedno naše telo odlazi u naše drugo telo...

What binds me to the trees is something they know how to do and I don't. All that binds the trees to me is my dogs ,who love me more tonight than other nights. For their hunger is more beautiful when they are hungry from the trees than hungry from me.

For I was afraid of memory; I knew that our memories and reminiscences are like icebergs. We see only the tips in passing, but the mass of land under water slips by unseen and inaccessible. We do not feel their immeasurable weight simply because they lie submerged in time, as in water. But, if we carelessly find ourselves in their way, we shall run aground against our own past and be shipwrecked.

I could see the bird soaring away. And then I realised there was no more shutting of your eyes to the truth,no salvation in being blindfolded,no dream and reality,no being awake or asleep. Everything is one and the same continuing eternal day and world, coiling around you like a snake. This is when I saw vast , remote happiness as being small but close.

Ima istina kojima čovek pomaže da umru—reče ona—i sam čovek je istina koja umire.